Computer architecture designs attempt to complete workloads more quickly. A number of architecture designs have been proposed or suggested for exploiting program parallelism. Generally, an architecture that can issue more than one operation at a time is capable of executing a program faster than an architecture that can only issue one operation at a time. Most recent advances in computer architecture have been directed towards methods of issuing more than one operation at a time and thereby speed up the operation of programs. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional microprocessor architecture 100. Specifically, the microprocessor 100 includes a program counter (PC) 110, a register set 120 and a number of functional units (FUs) 130-N. The redundant functional units 130-1 through 130-N provide the illustrative microprocessor architecture 100 with sufficient hardware resources to perform a corresponding number of operations in parallel.
An architecture that exploits parallelism in a program issues operands to more than one functional unit at a time to speed up the program execution. A number of architectures have been proposed or suggested with a parallel architecture, including superscalar processors, very long instruction word processors and multithreaded processors, each discussed below in conjunction with FIGS. 2, 4 and 5, respectively. Generally, a superscalar processor utilizes hardware at run-time to dynamically determine if a number of operations from a single instruction stream are independent, and if so, the processor executes the instructions using parallel arithmetic and logic units (ALUs). Two instructions are said to be independent if none of the source operands are dependent on the destination operands of any instruction that precedes them. A very long instruction word processor evaluates the instructions during compilation and groups the operations appropriately, for parallel execution, based on dependency information. A multithreaded processor, on the other hand, executes more than one instruction stream in parallel, rather than attempting to exploit parallelism within a single instruction stream.
A superscalar processor architecture 200, shown in FIG. 2, has a number of functional units that operate independently, in the event each is provided with valid data. For example, as shown in FIG. 2, the superscalar processor 200 has three functional units embodied as arithmetic and logic units 230-N, each of which can compute a result at the same time. The superscalar processor 200 includes a front-end section 208 having an instruction fetch block 210, an instruction decode block 215, and an instruction sequencing unit 220 (issue block). The instruction fetch block 210 obtains instructions from an input queue 205 of a single threaded instruction stream. The instruction sequencing unit 220 identifies independent instructions that can be executed simultaneously in the available arithmetic and logic units 230-N, in a known manner. The refine block 250 allows the instructions to complete, and also provides buffering and reordering for writing results back to the register set 240.
In the program fragment 310 shown in FIG. 3, instructions in locations L1, L2 and L3 are independent, in that none of the source operands in instructions L2 and L3 are dependent on the destination operands of any instruction that precedes them. When the program counter is set to location L1, the instruction sequencing unit 220 will look ahead in the instruction stream and detect that the instructions at L2 and L3 are independent, and thus all three can be issued simultaneously to the three available functional units 230-N. For a more detailed discussion of superscalar processors, see, for example, James. E. Smith and Gurindar. S. Sohi, “The Microarchitecture of Superscalar Processors,” Proc. of the IEEE (December 1995), incorporated by reference herein.
As previously indicated, a very long instruction word processor 400, shown in FIG. 4, relies on software to detect data parallelism at compile time from a single instruction stream, rather than using hardware to dynamically detect parallelism at run time. A VLIW compiler, when presented with the source code that was used to generate the code fragment 310 in FIG. 3, would detect the instruction independence and construct a single, very long instruction comprised of all three operations. At run time, the issue logic of the processor 400 would issue this wide instruction in one cycle, directing data to all available functional units 430-N. As shown in FIG. 4, the very long instruction word processor 400 includes an integrated fetch/decode block 420 that obtains the previously grouped instructions 410 from memory. For a more detailed discussion of very long instruction word processors, see, for example, Burton J. Smith, “Architecture and Applications of the HEP Multiprocessor Computer System,” SPIE Real Time Signal Procesing IV, 241–248 (1981), incorporated by reference herein.
One variety of VLIW processors, for example, represented by the Multiflow architecture, discussed in Robert P. Colwell et al., “A VLIW Architecture for a Trace Scheduling Compiler,” IEEE Transactions on Computers (August 1988), uses a fixed-width instruction, in which predefined fields direct data to all functional units 430-N at once. When all operations specified in the wide instruction are completed, the processor issues a new, multi-operation instruction. Some more recent VLIW processors, such as the C6x processor commercially available from Texas Instruments, of Dallas, Tex. and the EPIC IA-64 processor commercially available from Intel Corp, of Santa Clara, Calif., instead use a variable-length instruction packet, which contains one or more operations bundled together.
A multithreaded processor 500, shown in FIG. 5, gains performance improvements by executing more than one instruction stream in parallel, rather than attempting to exploit parallelism within a single instruction stream. The multithreaded processor 500 shown in FIG. 5 includes a program counter 510-N, a register set 520-N and a functional unit 530-N, each dedicated to a corresponding instruction stream N. Alternate implementations of the multithreaded processor 500 have utilized a single functional unit 530, with several register sets 520-N and program counters 510-N. Such alternate multithreaded processors 500 are designed in such a way that the processor 500 can switch instruction issue from one program counter/register set 510-N/520-N to another program counter/register set 510-N/520-N in one or two cycles. A long latency instruction, such as a LOAD instruction, can thus be overlapped with shorter operations from other instruction streams. The TERA MTA architecture, commercially available from Tera Computer Company, of Seattle, Wash., is an example of this type.
An extension of the multithreaded architecture 500, referred to as Simultaneous Multithreading, combines the superscalar architecture, discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 2, with the multithreaded designs, discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 5. For a detailed discussion of Simultaneous Multithreading techniques, see, for example, Dean Tullsen et al., “Simultaneous Multithreading: Maximizing On-Chip Parallelism,” Proc. of the 22nd Annual Int'l Symposium on Computer Architecture, 392–403 (Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, June 1995), incorporated by reference herein. Generally, in a Simultaneous Multithreading architecture, there is a pool of functional units, any number of which may be dynamically assigned to an instruction which can issue from any one of a number of program counter/register set structures. By sharing the functional units among a number of program threads, the Simultaneous Multithreading architecture can make more efficient use of hardware than that shown in FIG. 5.
While the combined approach of the Simultaneous Multithreading architecture provides improved efficiency over the individual approaches of the superscalar architecture or the multithreaded architecture, Simultaneous Multithreaded architectures still require elaborate issue logic to dynamically examine instruction streams in order to detect potential parallelism. In addition, when an operation takes multiple cycles, the instruction issue logic may stall, because there is no other source of operations available. Conventional multithreaded processorss issue instructions from a set of instructions simultaneously, with the functional units designed to accommodate the widest potential issue. A need therefore exists for a multithreaded processor architecture that does not require a dynamic determination of whether or not two instruction streams are independent. A further need exists for a multithreaded architecture that provides simultaneous multithreading. Yet another need exists for a method and apparatus that improve the utilization of processor resources for each cycle.